10th Anniversary of 9/11: We Remember Victims, Heroes and Those Still Suffering

September 9th, 2011 | By: Alan Schmadtke | Comments

It was a day that changed a generation – Sept. 11, 2001 – and changed America, a real-life history lesson to remember and never to forget. It was the Pearl Harbor of the 21st Century, a declaration of war against the US of A.
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On Sunday, the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks will be recognized and reflected upon in New York, Washington, D.C., and all across America, providing a day to honor the thousands of innocent victims who died and to revisit the thousands more who lived and suffer still.

The horror and emotion of it all will return – more than 3,000 Americans died on American soil that day – and so will the plight of the first-responders, volunteer workers and residents of New York City. A great many of them still face long-term health-care issues stemming from the toxic dust cloud that enveloped them upon the fall of the famed Twin Towers at the World Trade Center.

A wide-range of respiratory illnesses have erupted in Manhattan over the past decade, but only now are cancers like mesothelioma, caused by intense exposure to 2,000 tons of asbestos that were in those Towers, coming to light.

Much of that will be overshadowed on Sunday.

Attack by 4 Planes Was Highly Planned

Fifty years after the surprise Japanese airstrike at Pearl Harbor pushed America into World War II, al-Qaida terrorists used four of America’s own airplanes to draw us into war again.

In a highly planned attack, 19 hijackers took over four commercials airliners that morning carrying a combined 213 passengers, eight pilots and 25 flight attendants. All four planes were turned into deadly missiles. Two left from Boston, one from Dulles, Virginia, the last from Newark, New Jersey.

In succession:

American Airlines Flight 11 was flown into the side of the North Tower at the World Trade Center at 8:45 a.m.
United Flight 175 hit the South Tower at 9:03 a.m.
American Flight 77 dove into the side of the Pentagon Building in suburban Washington, D.C., at 9:45 a.m.
And United Flight 93, which started in Newark and apparently had targeted the White House, crashed into an open field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, at 10:10 a.m. That flight missed its intended target after the hijackers lost control of the plane during a fight with heroic passengers.

The result was the most wide-reaching show of American emotion on a single day since Dec. 7, 1941, the day Japanese planes attacked the American Naval fleet in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, leaving Americans stunned and then angered by the deadliest attack ever by an enemy on U.S. soil.

The difference in 50 years, of course, was the immediacy of the event and the media coverage. Across America a decade ago, television networks broke into their early morning programming to show smoke billowing from the burning towers. Confusion reigned. No one was sure what happened, at least not until cameras captured the second airliner boring into the South Tower.

Not long after, cameras captured the horrific aftermath: office workers jumping out of windows, the pancake collapse of first one tower, then the other, the overpowering totality of destruction all around the World Trade Center. One tower stood for 56 minutes after it was struck before collapsing. The second tower lasted 102 minutes.

Americans were left gasping.

President George W. Bush, who was in Sarasota, Florida, speaking at an elementary school when the first plane hit, was quickly hustled out of sight and provided the details as they were untangled. By the end of day, he had convened his cabinet. America was headed for war against al-Qaida and international terrorism, vowing revenge against an enemy that was hard to identify.

Although the 10-year manhunt for Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of the attack on America, ended when he was killed in Pakistan in May, 2011, the wars being fought in Iraq and Afghanistan still simmer. More than 4,400 U.S. soldiers have died in fights that cost nearly $1.3 trillion (through the end of 2011) wage, according to the Center for Defense Information.

Memorials across America This Weekend

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In New York on Sunday, the National 9/11 Memorial open officially, marking the biggest, most impressive, most expensive memorial ever built in America. The dedication, scheduled to be attended by President Barack Obama, will cap a week’s worth of commemorative events throughout the city, all designed to help us remember.

In Arlington, Virginia, there will be wreath-laying ceremony at the Pentagon Memorial, which opened in 2008. It will commemorate the 184 people who died at the Pentagon, including the 64 that were on the plane that sliced into the building that morning. Before leaving for New York, President Obama will be part of that ceremony, too.

In Shanksville, a sleepy town 80 miles west of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a Flight 93 Memorial Dedication is also Sunday. It is expected to be attended by hundreds of family members whose loved ones died in a field. Many of the passengers on the flight are hailed as heroes. Details of their in-air fight against the terrorists became clear through cellphone calls made from the plane before the crash.

Throughout America – in small towns and big cities – there will be events held to commemorate the 10th anniversary.

In New York this week, there were events leading up to the Memorial dedication. On Saturday morning – at exactly 8:46 a.m., Sept. 11, 2011 – thousands of New Yorkers will stand in solidarity along the Hudson River, joining hands to remember what happened. Sunday, all over the country, will be filled with ways to remember.

The theme in all of this is clear: Life in America didn’t stop with 9/11. It just took a sharp turn. Life has changed. Innocence is long gone.

Health Issues Persist because of 9/11 Dust

<a href= Anthony Correia / Shutterstock.comAlthough the memorial openings and the anniversary celebrations will help heal the wounds and provide comfort for the families and friends of the dead – the city of New York has grown stronger – there has been no closure for many who lived through the aftermath.

Health issues are not going away anytime soon. Toxic dust from the fallen and pulverized buildings, containing a number of carcinogens including asbestos, filled the air of Lower Manhattan for months after the attack. And despite assurances from city officials that the air was safe, it was not.

Respiratory illnesses have been common from the first day. Some began immediately. Others took years to materialize. Some cancers, like mesothelioma, can take anywhere from 10 to 50 years to appear after the exposure to asbestos fibers.

First responders at Ground Zero have suffered the worst. One study of 5,000 rescue workers, published a year ago by the office of Medical Affairs at the New York City Fire Department, found that everyone at the scene had some degree of lung impairment in the aftermath. Another study released earlier this month and published in the Lancet Medical Journal, found that firefighters at Ground Zero were 19 percent more likely to get cancer than those who worked elsewhere.

One former New York Police Department detective, Edwin Ortiz, died in July 2011 from colon cancer doctors believe was sped up by his exposure on 9/11.

Although many leading physicians have argued that some of the cancers already seen in first responders are directly related to the 9/11 dust, cancer was not included in the $1.8 billion Health and Compensation Act passed by Congress in December of 2010, even though it was designed to provide medical services and compensation for responders exposed to the dangerous toxins in the air.

Currently there are 60,000 people enrolled in the Mount Sinai Medical Center health monitoring and treatment program related to the 9/11 attack, although an estimated 40 percent lack health insurance.

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, in a study in 2007, found the estimated the cost of treating Ground Zero workers at $20 million per month. There are thousands of lawsuits pending against the city for a failure to provide proper equipment immediately to workers in the rubble days after the attack.

“I think we’ve just begun to understand what’s happening after the World Trade Center,” said Dr. David Prezant, the chief medical officer for the FDNY when he discussed the most recent study.

Alan Schmadtke is managing editor of AMAG, LLC. Alan is a veteran journalist who spent most of his years writing about college athletics in Florida before becoming an online editor and manager. A graduate of the University of Tennessee, Alan worked for Tribune Company for 25 years before joining the Mesothelioma Center in 2011.